December 04, 2006

Chris Morris

I was in London last week and I had two things on my to-do list. 1 - visit Pocahontas’ grave in Kent, and 2 - stalk my hero Chris Morris (at one point I sadly lost my grip on reality and imagined I would be able to convince Mr. Morris to accompany me to Kent). Well, the screwy trains kept me from making my pilgrimage and the closest my UK TV friends got me to Chris Morris was the DVD section at Fopp.

Chris Morris is the genius behind legendary British comedies like The Day Today and Brass Eye, (his Brass Eye special on Paedophilia is the most complained about TV program in UK history – watch the amazing 'Paedogeddon' 15 second advert (link).

Sacha Baron Cohen may be famous now for spoofing celebrities and politicians but Chris Morris was doing this sort of thing 12 years ago.

The best place to start watching is Brass Eye. Here are some of my favorite bits courtesy of YouTube

Expose on the drug CAKE (link)A length of skin clad tube.. (link)Crime problem (link)And of course the legendary Paedogeddon special, which you can watch in its entirety (part1) (part2) (part3)You might as well hunt down the DVD (link)

Brass Eye ran on Channel 4 in 1997, its precursor is the 1994 series The Day Today. This series is similar to Brass Eye,
but the fake news thing is much more front and center - and again I
must point out that he is doing this in 1994 - a full decade before
John Stewart makes headlines). Here are a few great clips:

A compilation of all the “speak your brains” vox-pop segments from the series (link)Sorted (link)Justice (link)Young Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan is an early coconspirator of Chris Morris and a regular on The Day Today) (link)

In 2004 Chris Morris co-wrote and directed a six episode series called Nathan Barley.
Nathan Barley is one of those obnoxious new media types – he refers to
himself as a “self-facilitating media node” He is the guy with the
obnoxious cell phone and the obnoxious mini trike and he has an
obnoxious website www.trashbat.co.ck (the Cook islands!) The menu loop on the Nathan Barley DVD provides a great intro to the character (link)
The series starts off with Nathan meeting Dan, a writer for a magazine
called Sugarape. Dan has a piece decrying the idiots like Nathan Barley
– of course all the idiots love the piece and Dan. Nathan thinks Dan is
ultra-cool and will do whatever Dan does (link).

Here is my favorite scene from the series. Sugarape is now
pimping Dan as their Preacher Man, he is even forced to wear a mock
preacher outfit in public – Watch what happens when he has to take the
stage and assist Nathan with his Trashbat Rap (link) In a way this scene reworks one of my favorite comedy bits of all time – the scene in The Life of Brian,
when Brian tells the crowd to think for themselves to which they all
shout back in unison "Yes, we are all individuals”. (of course this is
on youtube as well) (link)
The Nathan Barely DVD is a must have - it comes with an amazing booklet
that is identical to the idiotic culture jamming booklets Banksys puts
out - but of course this one is funny (link)

Like all great artists Chris Morris doesn’t really do interviews –
which makes this “about Chris Morris” clip pretty interesting – (link) Chris began his career in radio, there is a great program called On the Hour
(Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci both work on this as well). Some of
his more recent audio stuff is famous on the internets (link)
but I have yet to find where the web is hiding all the Chris Morris
mp3s (post a link in the comments if you know where they are). If you
want to watch more Chris Morris, Youtube will keep you busy for hours (link) (the clips from his Jam show are fantastic) and he is also currently a cast member of the Channel 4 program The IT Crowd (link).

'Nathan Barley' was also co-written by Charlie Brooker, who does extreme TV reviews for the Guardian under the name Screenburn - if you haven't heard of him, check out the archive here... http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/brooker/0,,1280131,00.html
(except last week's which fell a bit flat)

With these 2 as writers NB should have been brilliant. Instead, as a load of reviewers pointed out, it felt like they were flogging a dead horse...

"Nathan Barley began life as one of the characters in the online listings satire TV Go Home. Produced in 1999, it was an hilariously astute observation on Shoreditch. But since then, the dot-com bubble has burst, two of the four major “style mags” have folded and Shoreditch is full of suburban hen parties. So the immediate reaction to Nathan Barley is that it arrives long after the fact."

Nathan Barley may be post dot cock bubble - but the fact that the idiots fall for the very things that are mocking them make the show seem timeless, plus.. the cruelty of Nathan Barley is pretty amazing to watch as well.

On The Hour is an amazing radio program. I always assumed they staged the bizarre man-on-the-street interviews where Morris asked outrageous questions (talking to someone on the subject of the death penalty, Morris posed the question "What should be the penalty for death?"), but after seeing "The Day Today" I understood that Morris can just ask the most ridiculous questions straight-faced and somehow get his subject to try and respond as if it were a serious question.

Morris also worked with the late great Peter Cook on his last major radio project. Titled "Why Bother?", it was a series of interviews with Cook's character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. Morris, playing his pompous interviewer character, was a perfect foil for Cook, asking a series of bizarre questions (involving such topics as Betty Grable and the discovery of the fossilized remains of Christ as a child) which Cook met with sharp responses. "Why Bother?" shows that Cook was quite alert and skilled near the end of his life as he was when he first became famous during England's satire boom. The Peter Cook Appreciation Society interviewed Morris about the project, and the interview is online.

Charlie Brooker is a talentless chancer, his idea of a comedy is to use words like "Piddle" or "Bum Drizzle". Compare his juvenile efforts with those of his wittier and world wiser predecessor at the Guardian Jim Shelley, AKA Tapehead.

I believe used to find quite a bit of Chris Morris stuff at cookdandbombed

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/

The site is bafflingly slow now, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's bee torpedoed or something. But it's worth checking to see if the problem is merely transient.

Gerard Cosloy is right, tvgohome was the genesis for Nathan Barley, but the specific fake TV listings that created the germ of the series are archived at

http://thegestalt.org/simon/cunt/

I quite enjoy Charlie Booker's Screenwipe, fwiw.

BBC Radio 7 occasionally repeats On The Hour -- it's still funny whenever it comes on. Currently they're re-airing Alan Partridge's first feature program, radio's Knowing Me, Knowing You, which has a very tenuous connection to Chris Morris but which is funny in its own right. Episode 2 is currently up on BBC "Listen Again" at:

and episodes 3-6 will follow at that URL in weeks to come. I would be surprised if they don't re-air On The Hour within the next few months -- they seem to cycle much of the good stuff in quite often.

Morris has also done a short movie called "My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117" but i haven't seen it since I'm in the US and haven't been able to find a copy of that.

If you have a region-free player, you could do worse than getting The Day Today or Brass Eye from the UK on DVD. They really are hilarious and presage John Stewart and Colbert, though they have quite different angles on media, culture, and politics. And while I like a lot of Sasha Baron Cohen's stuff, I think Morris is a real satirist and Cohen tends more towards just punking his targets -- often quite hilariously, albeit.

"and again I must point out that he is doing this in 1994 - a full decade before John Stewart makes headlines"

and a full decade AFTER HBO's infamous Not Nessessarily the News
programm/ and to remain perfectly technical about dates, stewarts show actually took off more around the millenia, so cut hat 10 years to 4 or 5, tops ///

Chris Morris is amazing! I found Brasseye on a bit torrent site a few years ago and have shared them with everyone I know. The Paedophile episode is hilarious! HOWEVER, there is a large collection of audio plays called Blue Jam that is right up the alley of FMU listeners; in fact, I heard a cut from Blue Jam last week on FMU. There is an amazing bit with a 4 year old girl who stops by to help a neighbor clean up a murder he's just committed and to this day, all I have to do is chant "Chopped up man...chopped up man..." to crack up my kids (we're an odd family). I love Borat, but I worship Chris Morris! He is the modern equivalent of Jonathan Swift!

There is also a brilliant tv series that Morris made, based on the Blue Jam audio, called Jam. It's sort of like if Eraserhead was a sketch comedy show.
By far the creepiest thing he's ever done, but also one of the funniest.

If you were genuinely stalking him, you should have come to me for tips. The Talkback offices are round the corner from the office where I work (just off Oxford Street in London) and I frequently see him in cafes around the area. And I saw Peter Baynham in the Blue Posts once. Do I win a prize?

Just saw this whilst browsing and thought i ougtta let you know as soon as possible that the entire series of Chris Morris' "Blue Jam" Radio show (a mixture of surreal skits and amazing music. More of a music show with a dreamlike quality) can be found here